Faculty and staff submitting grants or contracts requesting funding of $10,000 or more to external agencies will receive a professional development award of $500. Should the grant or contract be funded for $10,000 or more, the college will award the submitter an additional $300 in professional development funds (this provision does not apply to funded non-competitive contracts). In order to qualify for these awards, faculty and staff must submit their proposals following the criteria identified below.

Criteria for Eligibility

• All regular faculty, full-time temporary faculty, and professional administrative staff (excluding Dean's office staff) are eligible for this award. When more than one faculty or staff submit the grant together, the award will be split equally among the grant writers.
• All grants and contracts submitted on or after July 1, 2001 are eligible for this award.
• Grants and contracts must be submitted to agencies external to the university and must request funding of $10,000 or more. Grants and competitive contracts must receive funding of $10,000 or more to qualify for the second $300 portion of the award. Non-competitive contracts do not qualify for the second portion of the award.
• Consideration of grant proposals is limited to full proposals. A contract, proposal or template that is developed for submission to multiple agencies or is submitted more than once to the same agency will qualify only once for this award. Letter proposals do not qualify for this award. If a proposal has multiple authors, the authors will share the award in a distribution of their choosing.
• Grants and contracts must be submitted to the Dean's office for review at least one week before the submission deadline.
• Grants and contracts must follow the currently established procedures of the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.
• CMU routinely restricts faculty and staff access to external organizations based upon institutional priorities. It is the submitter's responsibility to determine through the Dean's office, Development, and ORSP that submission of a grant or contract to a particular agency will be allowed by the university. This determination should be made in advance of the preparation and submission of the grant or contract.